Monday, September 10, 2007

You have been waiting for years and years for this. Ok, two and a half days. And now it has arrived.

As stated in Friday's post, the Stupendously Ultimate First Line Challenge's rules will be ill-defined and the winners subjectively chosen, so let's all just take a deep breath and agree that we will not get angry at the stupendously ultimate contest organizational committee (which has one member) and will enjoy this contest for the good hearty fun that it is -- in fact, I've just been assured by the surgeon general that participation in this contest counts as three servings of vegetables.

The rules -- er, on second thought let's call them guidelines:

1) All may participate, whether agented or unagented, published or unpublished, living or unliving.

2) Leave in the comments section one (1) first line to a novel, memoir, work of nonfiction or other such matter intended to be the opening of a book -- it may be your work in progress or something you have crafted for the purposes of the Stupendously Ultimate First Line Challenge. A second line may be included if it completes the first line, however aforementioned second line's necessity will be judged with great scrutiny since this is a first line contest (and a stupendously ultimate one at that).

3) Entries may be made between now and sometime late Wednesday night Pacific time. In Thursday's post I will put together a list of nominees for the grand prize and you the readers will have an opportunity to vote on the ultimate winner, which will be announced on Monday. (That is, if I can figure out how to enable voting.)

That's it! New rules will be introduced haphazardly, so keep an eye on the comments section.

And now the prizes. The prizes!! The grand prize winner will receive the satisfaction of a job well done, the esteem of his/her fellow blog readers, and...... a partial manuscript critique from the stupendously ultimate contest organizational committee of one! (Or some other equally stupendously ultimate non-cash prize if the winner doesn't need a manuscript critique.)

It was a dark and stormy night. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... Who will add their first line to the ranks of the greatest opening lines in literature? Let's find out.

473
comments:

There are some men who look as if they were born to wear the cassock and others who appear as if they are overdue to return a rented Halloween costume, but after the Sheriff dropped the exhumation papers onto Father Jellinek’s desk, the contrast of the priest's brickfaced rage against the simple white collar and black shirt gave him an appearance which was nothing short of demonic.

For those who don't have accounts here, how do you verify a winner for someone who is posting with a temporary name? Obviously the winning line would have to match the partial... have I just answered my own question?

Here is the question the people of my hometown of Vigilant, Michigan want answered: Why did I, Grace Johnson, an African-American high school senior, an honor student, take two bullets to protect the life of the white supremacist jackass Jonathan Gilmore?

"There are only two kinds of people in the world," Frankie told me as he took a revolver out of the drawer and placed it on the desk between us. "There's the ants and there's the ant eaters. Guess which I am?"

Since Nathan said multiple entries are OK within reason, here's my second first line (which is technically two, but he did say they weren't rules, just guidelines, right? right?!)

The last thing Heath expected to see on the day he started his quest to save the Princess of Baloria was a teenaged girl sitting in the middle of the street, covered in mud, crying, and naked. Of course, it's not as if Chloe had expected a knight in shining armor.

"I like an unprovoked attack just as much as the next merciless predator, kid, but if you want to sell the ass off something, you got to know more than just who to eat -- you also got to know who not to eat."

"Have you ever stopped to consider, Mr. Edwards, that it might be your glum disposition that's keeping you from finding a suitable wife?" asked the grey wolf."My disposition?" asked the frog, who in every aspect resembled an average pond frog, except this one was holding a small teacup and becoming visibly agitated.

Jerry hated his job – and not just because it involved collecting bad ideas – he hated his job because, on February 14th, 1975, he dropped a very bad idea – accidentally, of course – into the head of a five-year-old boy. Ten years later, that boy caused Armageddon.

Far up on a topmost shelf, behind an old and well-worn first edition of Huntley Mann’s The Fine Art of Miniatures and Doll Craft--long dusty since the tome’s contents had been learned by rote for so many years gone by now--there was concealed a small hole, just the size of a cufflink, precisely chiseled through the back of the bookshelf as if it were no more than perhaps a common knothole.

self promotion disclaimer: i know this is a first line contest, but my first line is puny and cryptic without the rest of the paragraph so...

"She loved the snow. For the tiny pieces of white brought a handle, or rather thousands of tiny handles. Each flake gave presence to the invisible that was already there, but could not be sensed. Riding on her motorcycle in the summer, she could, with effort, believe that she was cutting through the world, everything blurry and unnatural. But this snow, the first of the year, let her see the air separating before her. It allowed her eyes, rather than her mind, to tell her that she was riding in that delicate seam of inexistence. Like tracers hinted at the deadly stream of fellow bullets, so the snow uncloaked the air which was not merely the space between everything, but was comprised of very real and tangible substances: nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and here, in Kiev, Strontium-90 and cesium-137."(lit. fic.)

First of all Nathan, I would like to thank you for this challenge. It has been a great exercise in writing opening lines for me. These are the two that I think are my best ones from this weekend. One of them will be the opening to my first attempt at NANOWriMO.

1) Jill Jackson pulled into her driveway and was bewildered by the fog surrounding her home, it quickly became terror as the headless body of her husband emerged from the fog and collapsed on the hood.

2) The night started out like any other night, but when Detective Morris got to the scene of the crime, it became a nightmare.

The rope binding Neve Watson's wrists was beginning to chafe. Her corset was laced too tight, and in the hazy heat of the airship's engine room, she imagined she was having trouble breathing.-------------------

One other entry (my last). This one's from an as-yet-unnamed Science Fiction novel:

Everyone has their story of how they found out Earth had been destroyed: where they were; who they were with; who told them. I was in the brig of the USS Mariner Valley, having been kicked skyside the previous day for failing a health exam.

Rüdiger stood on the broken outer wall of Streitberg castle, plucked a hair from his nose, rubbed it between his finger and thumb, then flicked it away and wiped his hand on his round belly. This siege had gone on long enough.

The bomb had a very nice display: green and black with a thin blue border; Hayden couldn't be sure, alien languages were indecipherable, by definition, but he assumed it was counting down to a messy, very fatal explosion.

"The two biggest traumas in my life were caused by men: when I was eleven-years-old and Andy Rickerson pushed me out of the tree, and my leg broke, and ten years later when Andy's cousin Ryan got me pregnant and left without a goodbye, giving birth to my daughter, Lolly. Lolly is two now, but the pain is still fresh."

Knowing that he was about to die, just three weeks shy of turning sixteen, really sucked, and staring into the gaping jaws of the lunging shark less than a yard away, guaranteed that death would be terrifyingly painful.

Looking out over the ramshackle homes in our neighborhood - tin roofs, crumbling walls, bare-skinned children playing in the dirt - a familiar question comes to mind: What the hell am I doing in Mexico?

Looking out over the ramshackle homes in our neighborhood - tin roofs, crumbling walls, bare-skinned children playing in the dirt - a familiar question comes to mind: What the hell am I doing in Mexico?

Hi Linnea--yes, it's a historical. It'll be a while before before it'll really start to take shape. I'm focusing on finishing up two other projects. But I have the first couple chapters, and get to this one whenever I have a chance.

"My husband stood in the driveway waving his arms around as if blaming me for the kitten stuck in the tree, so I took the gun out of my handbag and shot the furry problem out of the tree and then pointed the gun at my arm-waving husband and smiled. I would be solving lots of problems today."

Mortimer McGurney arose from the comfort of his mahogany platform bed wiping sleep from his eyes and looking around with the kind of dazed awareness familiar to those having experienced an all night binge of drinking what is considered technically, a lethal poison.

Like most people, I prefer that problems be solved with very little of my own direct participation, so it was with unconcealed annoyance that I responded to mother's request that I fetch Jacob from the bottom of the pool.

The Seasons of the Gods are not the seasons of man. While Winter still reigns, the hearts and spirits of mankind are darkened as they huddle together against the Cold that permeates all, gathering around the hearth fires and daring little beyond their walls.

No one needed the confirmation.On it’s own, a hand moved to her neck, grazed the soft skin it found there with fingers longing for violent touch.

Thanks Nathan! Some awesome first lines here guys!

She didn’t want to remember the toe tag. The way it sat still on gray skin in the chilled air. The smell of the room had reminded her of senior year in biology. She’d been against dissecting the fetal pigs at first. Abortion had never appealed to her. But in the end she cracked open the skull, scraped out and identified the parts of the brain for extra credit.

So far, I've got 8 stand outs, first lines that, were I to pick up that book in a store, I'd read on.

Nathan, more than anything else this has been an incredible learning experience for me; by asking myself exactly why these 8 lines worked, and why the others didn't. More important, how can I apply what I discovered to my own work?

Marti, I want to give some homage to your first line by saying: "There are days when everything goes right, and then there are days when the nitwits in your writer's group make you wanna bang your head against the wall."

From nonfiction WIP- "7 Ways You Screw Up Your Life by Joining a Writer's Group."

Jenny stared at the card from the plain gray envelope she’d just opened. It bore the image of a flying saucer that had landed in a desert setting, with a cuteish, gray-skinned, bug-eyed alien waving in a friendly manner in the foreground.

--from a short story that recently earned me an enraged rejection. I think that story pushes some buttons...

The ritual was one of Rekare's memories, a part of her life entwined so deeply with the complex fabric of the twelve years of her life that she couldn't remember a time when the hot, intense, end of summer did not contain it.

--from a fantasy novel in progress, and this is my last one. I promise.

It was a time of Miles,Coltrain,and Warhol; a time when the answer was blowing in the wind and we were all Dharma bums howling on the Coney Island of the Mind while the English were reinventing Rock-n-Roll and men eighteen to thirty-five were looking for some way out of the draft.

This is the first line from my novel 'DISCONTENT'Thanks & Cheers!Eric / email: adibat@mac.com

The first thing Rebecca remembered about Spain was the guitar music – not the strident guitar licks of post-Vietnam War rock, but dulcet flamenco notes which crept into her psyche with soothing, exotic sweetness.

If I were Italian I'd be 90% more interesting. I guess if I were half Italian I'd be 45% more interesting, which isn't bad. Since I'm not, I should at least be able to go to Italy, where I could eat some excellent Fettuccini Alfredo and antipasti. I mean, is that really so much to ask?

"You're going straight to hell listening to that music" my mother screamed,pounding on my bedroom door as I was groovin to Billie Holidaysinging "Strange Fruit". This is Hell and my mother is the Devil.

And since cj cheated and used a whole paragraph because of short sentences, I'm going to try this one, even though I will fully understand, Nathan, if you disqualify it:

Escalante, Utah. July. About 105 in the shade. You have to buy ice cream cones in cups if you want to eat the stuff before it runs all over your hand. You have to carry a bottle of water with you just to walk a block. You sweat through an average of three shirts per day -- even with the air conditioning going full blast. Really, it’s no place for a half-vampire who passes out in bright sunlight.

I agree w/ Anonymous about voting for our own stuff. Personal taste will also play a big part in the voting (EX: SciFi writer may not care for YA, etc). For me, I think I'll pass on the voting altogether but the SUFLC has been a blast - Thanks Nathan & all participants! (There's some good stuff goin' on out there!)Y'all are awesome.

I was right: Nathan is getting swamped. So, er, I'm going to add to the swamping with a second (and last! really!) entry. My first, waaaay up there at the beginning, is the first line of a time-travel novel. This one is the first line of a short story:

Diana was waiting for Carpenter when he returned to his office after witnessing her killer's execution.

The sidewalk pulsed with Desireas I saw a bodega swarmed with people from two to eighty, men playing dominoes drinking sodas and beers, cigarettes hanging from pouted defiant lips while teens selling illegal contraband blasting loud salsa and 'marengi' mingled with sweating men in undershirts flirting with the ever smiling Chiquita's in shorts revealing beautiful legs and curvaceous rear-ends,idling about the wooden carts selling hand shaved ices flavored with syrups poured from reused rum bottles into cardboard cups.

On the matter of voting -- I haven't yet decided how it's going to work, but I'm leaning towards a poll that includes the finalists with the ability to do a write-in vote. Yes, people would be able to vote multiple times, but I'm hoping both the honor system and the number of non-participants who vote will outweigh any overzealousness on the part of the nominees.

Line #1 - Until I was fourteen or so, I always wondered how it got decided that one sister was the pretty one while the other was stuck being labeled 'smart' or 'responsible'. Because as far back as I could remember, Caris had always been adorable. (YA)

Line #2 - I used to have a lot of perfect moments.(YA)

Line #3 - Running to the nearest restroom and barfing: how I reacted when, upon meeting my older brother at the airport after he'd spent over a year studying abroad, he introduced me to his fiance.(YA)

After three excellent lifetimes, Cullen Kearney, fourth son of King Eadbard Donal of Arin, was returning to the misery-inducing plane of existence he’d succeeded in avoiding for two hundred years – home.

Dervla Tillman threw herself off the balcony of the penthouse while I was at work today and although her body was gone by the time I returned I could track her fall past the bougainvillea-decorated balconies of the building by the colours of the flowers scattered across the grass below.

#1: Death wormed its way into my dreams often enough, but a sandpaper-lined coffin with its own pay phone was new.

From, Deadworld, completed paranormal suspense novel.

#2: Wrath of God had been Mac Duquene's first thought when ten days of torrential rain began to flood the streets of downtown San Antonio, but it was the limbless torso that turned and tumbled by him in the muddy, garbage-filled waters that had him thinking it might be the wrath of something else entirely.

I came awake after a thousand years entombed to the smell of blood, brimstone, pungent herbs, the blood of a probably-virgin sacrifice, and the monotonous droning of a power-hungry lich, or mage, or conjurer, or overlord – whatever the fuck this one was calling himself.

From a one of the (many) books I've started to write, this one tentatively titled: "A Magical Sword and an Evil Overlord."

I was standing there naked when a dead man sauntered into my bathroom. Sauntered - not shambled. That was the second frightening thing.

From a WIP A Malignity of Ghosts, - urban fantasy.

She liked walking here among the little mysteries, even on this cold, still day at the turning of the year when the trees were bone-bare and the crystal-bound earth crunched under her boots like broken teeth.

From a short story Soul Stone .

From Come to Dust .I hoped the legends were right - that this time, surely, he would stay dead.

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